Monday, November 28, 2016

One suspect dead, 9 injured after attack at Ohio State University involving car, butcher knife

An 18-year-old Somali man was behind an attack involving a car and
butcher knife on the campus of Ohio State University Monday that left
nine people injured, law enforcement sources told Fox News.
After the suspect plowed his vehicle into the crowd,
officials said he got out of the vehicle and began attacking people with
a butcher knife before he was shot and killed by a campus police
officer.
Two law enforcement sources told Fox News the
attacker, identified as Abdul Artan, came into the United States as a
Somali refugee, and was granted status as a legal permanent resident.
The motive behind the attack is still unclear,
according to law enforcement sources, but investigators are not ruling
out anything at this point.
Ohio State Police Chief Craig Stone said the attacker purposely drove over a curb and into pedestrians.
"This was done on purpose," he said.
Columbus Police Chief Kim Jacobs said police were looking into whether it was a terrorist attack.
Monica Moll, the school's public safety
director, told reporters the attack took place in front of Watts Hall,
the location of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering,
around 9:52 a.m.
A campus officer nearby engaged the suspect, who was
attacking people with a butcher knife, and shot and killed him within
minutes.
"The threat ended when the officer shot the suspect," she told reporters.
Moll said that "injuries were minimized," due to the rapid reaction of campus police.
Ohio State University said in a statement the
injuries included stab wounds, and being struck by a vehicle. There were
also other injuries that were being evaluated.
Jerry Kovacich, a third-year in welding engineering, told the school's newspaper, The Lantern,
that he witnessed a man in a car try to drive into a crowd of people
after a fire alarm went off. After the car crashed, Kovacich told the
newspaper he witnessed the man then attack bystanders with a knife.
“I didn’t see anything with the shooter, what
happened was it was outside of MacQuigg Lab,” Kovacich told The Lantern.
“The guy ended up just coming and hopping the curb with his car and
trying to mow down a couple people. He lost control, and I think he
ended up hitting three people, and then people were around the car.
Somebody asked him if he was OK and the guy just hopped out of the car
with a butcher knife and starting chasing people around.”
There continues to be a massive law enforcement
presence on campus, including a SWAT team and officers with long
guns. Police also blocked off roads around the perimeter of the campus,
clogging area traffic. Classes were canceled for the rest of the day.
The school initially sent out a campuswide alert at
9:56 a.m. local time which read, "Buckeye Alert: Active Shooter on
campus. Run Hide Fight. Watts Hall. 19th and College."
Campus police tweeted the same alert, and wrote in another tweet, “Continue to shelter in place. Avoid area of College.”
By 11:30 a.m., the school announced the shelter in
place was lifted, and the "scene is now secure." All classes were
canceled on the Columbus campus for the remainder of Monday.
Authorities said later that it doesn't appear that the suspect used a gun in the attack.
Authorities initially believed there were multiple
attackers, with one possibly hiding in a parking garage, but later said
at a news conference they believe there was only one suspect.
One student who spoke to WBNS from her hiding place in a restroom said the situation was frightening.
“I’m a little shaken up at first,” Cydney Ireland told the station. "I do feel safe based off the room I’m in.
Rachel LeMaster, who works in the engineering college, told The Associated Press a fire alarm sounded before the attack.
"There were several moments of chaos," she said. "We
barricaded ourselves like we're supposed to since it was right outside
our door and just hunkered down."
LeMaster said she and others were eventually led outside the building and she saw a body on the ground.
Fox News contributor Rod Wheeler, a former Washington
DC homicide detective and an OSU alum, said the school's police
department is highly trained.
"People don’t need to panic,” he said, adding that those in hiding should stay put and switch their cell phones to vibrate.
A law enforcement officials tells Fox News that the
FBI Columbus Field Office SWAT team has been activated, and deployed to
the campus to assist local authorities with the reported active
shooting.
The ATF Columbus Field Division agents are also responding to the scene, the agency tweeted.
The sprawling, 58,000-student main campus in downtown Columbus is one of the nation's largest. http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/11/28/developing-active-shooter-alert-at-ohio-state.html